Improvements to Microsoft's Skydrive

This past week Microsoft added a function that allows SkyDrive users to share documents for EDITING that does NOT require the recipient to have to login with a LiveID. Effectively, as long as you "share" the content for editing, the recipient of the URL can make changes and save changes to documents.

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Virtual Networks in Windows 2012 and Azure VMs

This article addresses a key function built in to Windows 2012 that on first blush may seem like a complex technical networking feature, but that functionality has GREAT implications when extending your on-premise Windows to the cloud (like Azure VMs). You don't recognize the value of Virtual Networking in Windows 2012 until you truly start to see where the functionality is CORE to an organization that in a few years (or sooner) have servers on-premise as well as in the cloud.

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Understanding and Implementing Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines

For organizations looking to "go to the cloud", as much as Microsoft has had Azure Services that allows orgs to rewrite their apps and host them in the cloud, this new Azure Virtual Machines actually allows you to build a full blown Windows 2008 or 2012 Virtual Machine (VHD) in the cloud so you can load up whatever apps you want on the server.

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Showcasing Surface Tablet and Windows 8 at the Palo Alto Microsoft Store

I had an opportunity to speak at the Microsoft Store in Palo Alto, California, this afternoon and demonstrate the Microsoft Surface Tablet and Windows 8. I can't say I've had an opportunity to spend a lot of time in one of the Microsoft Stores, so this was a great experience for me to get to know the Microsoft Store and the various products at the store!

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Leveraging Microsoft’s SkyDrive for Cloud-based Storage

How often do you attach a picture to an email, send it to someone, only to later to want to dig up that same picture to attach and share with someone else?  Of course there’s Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, etc that all work great for photo sharing.  But then for work, you need to share a Word document, PowerPoint presentation, PDF files, and the like which aren’t well shared by the Facebook, Instagram, Flickr’s of the world.  This is where I’ve come to realize that Microsoft’s SkyDrive has REALLY fit in to a great overall content sharing medium for me!

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Microsoft Surface RT or Surface Pro?

Microsoft announced the pricing and a release date for their Windows 8 Surface Pro tablet today, so the question is, do you get a Surface RT now, or wait a few weeks to get the Surface Pro.

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What’s New in Windows 2012

I just wrapped up a blog series on Exchange 2013, now going to focus on a blog of “What’s New” in Windows Server 2012.  Windows 2012 shipped in the summer of 2012, however I was fortunate to have been able to work with Microsoft for the past 2-1/2 years on the development, deployment, feedback, and testing of Windows 2012.  We put our first round of 2012 servers into production as early as the Winter of 2011 serving up full time access to Win2012 functions.  But like every version of Windows, organizations don’t simply just implement the new version of Windows Server

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Tutorial on Using Windows 8

The first time I sat in front of the Windows 8 interface, I have to admit I was not thrilled; no Start button, I couldn’t find the control panel, things just weren’t what I was used to. That was over  two years ago in the early adopter program for Windows 8, and now when I use Windows XP or Windows 7, I find it very inefficient to "have to click through so many menus" to find and do basic stuff.

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Revisiting Microsoft Intune for Cloud-based Systems Management

When Microsoft Intune first came out a couple years ago at well over $15/user per month and effectively only did patching of systems from the cloud, I wondered who the heck would pay that much money for something you can do for free (simply using Windows Update from the cloud).  But that was version 1.0 of Intune, or what Microsoft officially called Wave “A” of the product.

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Exchange 2013 - Tight Integration with SharePoint, Lync, and Office Web Apps

The last of this current series on What’s New in Exchange 2013 that have driven organizations to choosing to implement Exchange 2013 is around the tight integration of ALL of the Office 2013 servers (Exchange 2013, SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013, and Office Web Apps) together!  Instead of separate applications that have “hooks” between them, the 2013 family of Office Server products are very tightly integrated, so much so that you can completely get rid of multiple “frontend” Web servers hosting OWA, Lync Web, SharePoint web and have a SINGLE Office Web App server (or cluster of

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Exchange 2013 - Truly Enterprise Scale and Supportability

Microsoft greatly improved Exchange 2013 to better support millions of mailboxes that Microsoft hosts for Office 365, and the benefits of the enhancements are received by us all even when we put Exchange 2013 on-premise.  As much as most organizations will not have “millions” of mailboxes for their on-premise Exchange, the fact that a single Exchange server can now host thousands of mailboxes (instead of hundreds of mailboxes) means fewer (MUCH FEWER) mailbox servers are needed in an organization.  Also, Microsoft did away with the Hub Transport role that was in Exchange 2007

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Exchange 2013 Enhanced Email Retention, Archiving, Legal Hold, and eDiscovery

In this day and age, email is more than just messages, calendars, and contacts for organizations, they also need the ability to address legal requirements around message retention (both keeping content or automatically deleting content by policy) along with the ability to do eDiscovery search of content throughout the enterprise as well as put content on Legal Hold.  While much of this was included in Exchange 2010, what Microsoft did for Exchange 2013 (and the corresponding SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013, and Office Web Apps) greatly enhances an organizations ability to perform required t

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Exchange 2013: Support for (non-Microsoft) Tablets, Laptops, Mobile Phones

As I mentioned in my Intro posting on What’s New in Exchange 2013, one of the big drivers for organizations to migrate to Exchange 2013 has been Microsoft’s support for non-Microsoft endpoint devices.  Exchange 2013 has full support for iPhones, iPads, Android tablets, Android phones, Apple Macs, Linux systems in addition to what you’d expect for Windows devices, Windows RT tablets, and Windows 8 systems.

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What’s New in Exchange 2013 (an early adopter’s perspective)

With the release of Exchange 2013, there have been many blog posts on What’s New or implementation guidance, however the content has been pretty typical of the same stuff repeated over and over, or someone’s perspective of implementing the technology in their isolated home lab.  For those of us officially participating in Microsoft’s early adopter program implementing Exchange 2013 in real life production environments, we are restricted from blogging, talking about, sharing our experiences until the product releases, so I’m always chomping at the bit waiting for the final relea

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Solar Eclipse - May 20, 2012

The total eclipse of the sun happens frequently, but usually not in a metropolitan area easily viewable. This evening (Sunday, May 20, 2012), the Solar Eclipse occurred over the Western United States, this picture was taken in Silicon Valley.  As we were looking through a pinhole camera, we looked at the wall of the house and realized that the hundreds of leaves on the tree behind us was acting like hundreds of pinhole cameras against the wall.

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Microsoft Imagine Cup 2012 IT Challenge 24-hour FINAL Competition Begins!!!

The annual Microsoft Imagine Cup IT Challenge FINAL hands-on competition has begun!  This is a 24-hour competition that the final 6 student competitors will compete for the chance to be crowned best of the best in the world!  Here's a live blog link of the competition that I will be updating every couple hours...  http://randsnet.blogspot.com/2012/05/imagine-cup-2012-final-competition.html   Good luck competitors!!!  Rand

Imagine Cup 2012 IT Challenge Judges Announced!

The Imagine Cup 2012 IT Challenge has announced it's competition judges.  The Imagine Cup (http://www.imaginecup.com), sponsored by Microsoft, is a global competition in its 10th year of competition that invites college students from around the world to leverage their expertise in computer technologies for cash prize money and an opportunity to be crowned the "best of the best in the world" in technology solutions.

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Microsoft System Center 2012 / Private Cloud Event Commentary

As Microsoft announced their strategy on Private cloud and the upcoming roll-out of System Center 2012 this morning, I’ve been exchanging messages with our clients on some of the key points (thanks to those of you TEXTING me while I was online live...), wanted to summarize some of the discussions and the questions (and my answers) to the queries going on this morning.

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Exchange Outlook Calendaring Problems (lost meetings, delegate problems, etc)

Its been over a year since I originally blogged this problem with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, and the problem has expanded even greater, and thus an updated blog post here.  The problem has to do with organizations having calendar appointments and meeting requests “disappear”, get corrupt, meeting delegates (boss/assistant) having challenges with appointments showing up, disappearing, reappearing, etc.

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Doing e-Discovery / Message Retention / Legal Recovery in Exchange 2010 - Office 365

The topic has come up many times recently on how organizations can leverage Microsoft Exchange 2010 (on-premise) or Microsoft Office 365 (in the cloud) to retain messages, legally hold and recover messages, and successfully perform eDiscovery tasks as required by legal counsel, by law, and/or as needed.

This document clarifies what’s included “in the box” in Exchange 2010 and Office 365, and goes through the step by step procedures for setting up what is necessary to retain content and detailed procedures on how to query and look up information.

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